An interview with Ama Ata Aidoo : 'I learnt my first feminist lessons in Africa'

Abstract

This is an interview with Ghanaian writer AMA ATA AIDOO. It took place in Accra (Ghana), on January 1998. After living abroad for more than fourteen years, Aidoo decided to go back to Ghana. When this interview took place, she was still trying to settle down. Since then, she has kept herself intellectually active, and has been invited to lecture to numerous international universities and prestigious institutions all over the world. With the passing of time, she has become still more vocal and critical, and she continues to be widely admired in Africa and abroad. Aidoo is considered an outspoken African writer who tackles feminist issues in her fiction. Brought up in, and respectful with the Akan tradition she comes from, Aidoo openly states that she learnt her first lessons in feminism from African women, and in Africa. In this interview, we focus on feminist theories—and the controversies around African, African-American, and Western Feminisms—and look at some of her most relevant works, to see to what extent her female protagonists deal with the somewhat schizophrenic reality of colonialism, and post-colonialism, at the same time they face African traditional culture and modernity.